Wallace W. Atwood Lecture: Marine Geography on the Cutting Edge–A Dive to the Deepest Place on Earth

In the summer of 2022, Dr. Dawn Wright became the first Black person to dive to the deepest spot on the entire planet – Challenger Deep – in the western Pacific Ocean, in collaboration with Victor Vescovo and his Caladan Oceanic team. During this lecture, Dr. Wright will talk about this dive—including the geospatial and imaging technologies used, discoveries from mapping this part of the world in history-making detail, implications of discoveries for future ocean science and ocean AI, and in general why it is so vitally important to map and understand the ocean for our continued quality of life, regardless of where we live.

Dawn J. Wright, Ph.D., NAS, NAE, is Chief Scientist of the Environmental Systems Research Institute (aka “Esri”), a world-leading geographic information system (GIS) software, services and spatial data science company. She is also Professor of Geography & Oceanography at Oregon State University.